


is it too late to come on home?

by avosettas



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale), Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreamtale Nightmare Sans & Dreamtale Sans | Dream (Undertale), Dreamtale Nightmare Sans (Undertale), Dreamtale Sans | Dream (Undertale), Empath, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28763322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas
Summary: Every morning when he wakes, and every night before he sleeps, Dream does a cursory sweep of the castle. It’s not needed, but he likes to know everyone is safe.Nightmare is last, and, it’s not until he’s fastened his scarf that he finds his brother, still in his own bedroom. The presence is so weak that had Dream not been combing through the castle meticulously to find him anyway, he’d have missed it.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 107





	is it too late to come on home?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NaylaScribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaylaScribbles/gifts).



Every morning when he wakes, and every night before he sleeps, Dream does a cursory sweep of the castle. It’s not needed, but he likes to know everyone is safe. 

This morning, he opens his eyes slowly, blinking in the weak sunlight that’s returned since he began living here. But it takes more effort to keep his eyes open than it does to empathetically reach out for the castle’s inhabitants. 

Killer is still asleep, everything Dream can sense from him relatively muted by the haze of neutral sleepiness. 

Dust, further away, is content, a stronger, positive feeling that Dream can more accurately pinpoint. He can’t tell exactly what it is that’s making him feel that way, but the emotion lets him note Dust’s location in the back of his mind; he’s outside in his garden already. 

Horror is awake, too, cheerful and buoyant this morning, probably already making breakfast. He’s near Dust, which makes sense - the kitchen window looks out on the garden beds Horror keeps, and the cracked, terracotta pots that Dust coaxes his plants to bloom out of.

Cross brings him back, since he’s in the next room over, and though he’s awake, his emotions are annoyingly neutral. A further prod at them reveals that’s still groggy; probably, Dream decides, he’ll wake up with breakfast and be fine.

Nightmare is last, as usual, simply because it takes the longest to find him. Negative emotions are his territory, not Dream’s, and every feeling Dream gets from them is just a faint, barely-there whisper rather than the warmth he feels from positive emotions. 

Dream stands from his bed, stumbling a little due to being unfocused on his physical body, and begins getting dressed as he mentally pokes around in the empty, emotionless spaces of the castle. It’s not until he’s fastened his scarf that he finds his brother, though, still in his own bedroom. The presence is so weak that had Dream not been combing through the castle meticulously to find him anyway, he’d have missed it. 

(Weaker than usual, in fact. Even when Nightmare was happy, his emotions were concealed beneath the negative aura he’d gained from eating all those apples.) 

For now, Dream takes his diadem from the bedside table and settles it on his skull, deciding that if Nightmare hasn’t come down by lunchtime, he’ll go up to him. 

~

Nightmare doesn’t show himself by lunchtime. Or by dinner. 

Now, Dream stands in front of his bedroom door, waiting for his brother to either sense him and call him in, or for the courage to knock. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but with the feeling of his brother’s emotions so faint… 

He steels himself and knocks, telling himself that Nightmare is probably just upset, and the aura plus the negative emotions are making everything fainter. 

He’s about to knock again when Nightmare responds. It’s not a verbal response, but it’s a response nonetheless, through the telepathic connection they’ve always shared, and only recently began using again. 

He doesn’t quite use words, but the reluctant intention in the message is clear: _Come in_. Dream pushes the door open, and then closes it again behind him. 

It takes effort to force himself not to react to the sight in front of him, though if he shows any micro-expression of disgust or fear, Nightmare probably senses it anyway. 

Nightmare is curled up on the bed, less of a person and more of a puddle. Black slime seeps from his body, running off the sides of the bed like viscous liquid instead of the relatively solid materialized negativity that Dream knows it to be, despite its appearance. His remaining eye socket is wide and unseeing, the cyan light in it hazy, and his bones rattle loudly despite the cushion provided by the slime. 

“Night…” Dream murmurs, stepping very slowly and deliberately towards the bed. Nightmare’s eye flicks towards him, staring as Dream makes his way to the edge of the bed and crouches to be at his eye level. 

“Can I sit, or will it hurt?” Dream asks softly. Nightmare only shrugs jerkily. “You don’t know?” This time, he nods, so Dream places a gentle, gloved hand onto the ooze. 

His eyelights flick across Nightmare’s face, though he isn’t quite sure what he’s watching for. “Does this hurt?” He presses his palm into it a bit, the bitter cold seeping through his gloves, and Nightmare still doesn’t react, except to stare warily at his brother’s hand. Then, he shakes his head. 

So Dream sits, watching closely for any reactions from Nightmare. 

He’s never seen his brother like this - so clearly upset, so… devoid of a solid form. His body is barely defined, more of a lump rising from the puddle resting on the comforter than anything, and Dream can’t see where he ends and the ooze begins. 

It’s very clear that Nightmare doesn’t want to talk - or _can’t_ , Dream isn’t sure. He doesn’t pry; instead, he takes his gloves off - less worried about stains and more concerned about letting his brother feel a caring, direct touch - and reaches out towards Nightmare’s skull. 

Nightmare allows it, pushing his skull up towards Dream’s hand like a needy cat, and Dream hums a tuneless song as he caresses his brother’s head. It takes a lot of energy to magnify his own aura, weak as it is, but for his brother, it’s worth it, and so Dream focuses on projecting that positivity through the negativity that has covered Nightmare for five centuries. 

It shouldn’t hurt - Dream has never been strong enough for that, even if Nightmare is now negativity personified - but he watches Nightmare’s face closely anyway. His brother has calmed slightly, the rattling of his bones settling into a more restrained clatter every so often, though his face is twisted with anxiety still. 

Even the ooze has calmed, retracting back to his body. Dream can see him more clearly now - a foot here, the tips of his tentacles over there - and when it finally retreats enough that the only thing left on the bed is his brother, Dream gently hauls him into his lap. 

Nightmare is still less… solid than he usually is, the liquid negativity flowing in big drops but never actually dripping off his body, but Dream wouldn’t call him a puddle now, at least. His tentacles hang limply behind him, some of the ends hanging off the bed. They barely move, or even twitch like Dream is used to. 

“Did something happen?” Dream asks quietly, still petting Nightmare’s head softly. He’s warmed up, too; less frigid and more his usual chill. 

“No,” Nightmare sighs, his voice softer and less steady than usual. “Just fucking… ugh.” 

Dream hums in response, switching to rub circles onto his brother’s upper back as Nightmare moves to cling to him, head pressed to Dream’s chest. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

“No, I’m just…” Nightmare sighs against him, breath warm against Dream’s shirt. “Ugh,” he repeats. 

Dream murmurs a quiet affirmative. He’s seen Nightmare upset enough times now that he knows that, eventually, he’ll open up. He doesn’t need advice; he just needs someone to _listen_. 

In the meantime, he presses his fingers into Nightmare’s back, kneading in circles above where his tentacles meet his spine. It makes Nightmare relax against him, just a smidge, and Dream can’t help but smile above him. 

Eventually, Nightmare twists his head so he won’t get a mouthful of Dream’s shirt when he speaks, and says, “Do you ever think about… about the village?” He won’t meet Dream’s eyes, focused on a point only he can see. 

Dream does think about the village. He thinks about the village all the time, how he’d like to be there again simply to scream at the villagers for hurting Nightmare, for pulling the wool over his eye sockets. Sometimes, now that they’d made their peace with each other, he wished that he could go back and kill them, for the pain they’d put his dear brother through. Horrifying thoughts of horrid actions to take against horrible people. 

And even before now, sometimes he wished he could go back and hurt them so that they had never had the opportunity to turn Dream and Nightmare against each other in the first place. 

“Sometimes,” Dream replies simply. “But I try not to dwell on it. It… makes me angry.” 

Nightmare laughs humorlessly, bones weakly rattling in Dream’s lap. “Stars fucking forbid that the guardian of positivity feels _anger_ ,” he says, but there’s no edge to it. Or, at least, no edge aimed towards Dream. His claws curl into Dream’s jacket, and Dream opens his mouth to respond, but Nightmare starts up again before he can so much as make a sound.

“They had so many fucking ideas about _good_ and _evil_ , but no one ever considers that they might not be the good ones.” Nightmare’s voice is strained, and Dream can only hold him closer as he feels the cold tears that he suspects his brother’s been holding back all this drip onto his legs. “No one considers that there’s - there are shades of gray! There are people who are _both_! I fucking - I wanted to hurt them all so bad, but I would never hurt you… I wouldn’t have hurt them, either! But they were so adamant that I was - am…” 

Dream waits for him to continue after the abrupt stop, but after a few moments of just shaky gasps and soft rattling, he says, “Night, you aren’t _evil_. I know you never have been.” 

“After you were taken from me, I killed so many people.” It’s quiet, rasping, but Dream soothes him with a gentle hand on his skull. 

“I know, brother,” Dream tells him. “But you just told me, there are shades of gray. And in grief, it’s hard to see the dead from the living…” He sighs a bit, leaning back against the headboard and pulling Nightmare with him. Nightmare looks embarrassed, but he curls against Dream’s chest nonetheless, and Dream holds him tightly. 

“You were grieving,” Dream continues, “and even then, you still found a family, didn’t you? And it’s not as if you hurt everyone you met...” 

“I don’t want to take about this anymore,” Nightmare says, voice cracking a bit. 

“That’s okay,” Dream smiles. “Just know that I don’t think you’re a bad person, okay?” 

Nightmare doesn’t respond, and Dream doesn’t press it. His bones are rattling again, though the noise the make is muffled. Now that he’s no longer talking, Dream allows himself to kick up a purr, in hopes that the soft rumbling will calm his brother down, or at least allow him to relax a bit. 

Usually, when one monster purrs to another, the other will purr in response, but Nightmare doesn’t. That’s fine with Dream; he’s doing this to calm his brother, not to communicate that he’s happy. 

He loosens his grip on Nightmare somewhat to stroke his back again, though now he rubs around the base of the tentacles there. Nightmare has never actually told him so, but it’s obvious that they cause him pain. They finally move when Dream touches them, stirring from their limpness and curling loosely around him. 

It’s like Nightmare’s unconsciously hugging him. His claws are still dug into Dream’s jacket, though his grip has loosened and his knuckles unclench ever so slightly as Dream rubs his thumb back and forth over the base of the tentacle closest to him. 

Dream isn’t sure when Nightmare stopped rattling, but he’s glad for it; hopefully, his brother has calmed down some. He won’t move until Nightmare does - can’t move, really. Stars, Nightmare is like a _cat_. 

But it’s fine. Nightmare is a comfortable weight on his chest, and kneading the tension from the base of each tentacle gives him something to do. The first curls around his shoulders when he removes his hands from it, like a strange, slimy feather boa. 

It’s when Dream begins to massage the next that Nightmare begins purring. His purr is rougher than Dream’s, almost a growl, but too soft to actually be one. Dream can barely hear it; the only reason he knows it’s happening is that he can feel the vibrations from Nightmare’s body on his own. 

Dream doesn’t acknowledge it - he’s sure Nightmare will stop if he does, and he’s had enough of seeing his brother upset for a lifetime. He just lets his own grow louder as he holds onto his brother. He’ll be here as long as Nightmare needs him.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter @avosettas (18+ only please)


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